I partially agree with you.
The difference is that Digi always looks flat, uninspiring and very clean, too clean at times.
After all, it is just 0 and 1.
"This digital bashing" is not about how one looks different from the other, it is about survival of film.
I cringe that even in this forum, some people keep saying "if I want to do colour, I use my DSLR, or iphone, etc", or keep mentioning how many Digi they have, or keep buying expired film.
These people have no idea of the damage they are doing and have been doing since 2000.
How many more films are we going to loose, how many more labs are going to close, how many more jobs are going to be lost, etc until these people understand this simple saying: "if you don't use it, you'll loose it"?
Simple economics, which most of the civilized Western World seems not to understand.
But, we would need just some 10-20% of the population to shoot a roll of film every now and then to see a real resurgence.
I cringe when some Digitographer raves about his last Leica M digi or Nikon D-something and have no problem in splashing £5000-10000 in a single body, but seem to have problems in paying a few dozen pounds for fresh film, or paper, or development in a proper lab.
I'm not admired at all by what this Fuji exec said about film longevity.
But, I see signs of hope in a new generation or when I see a middle-age woman returning to film, clutching a Rolleiflex and actually using it.
I still have some hope that some Digitographers might actually see the light, or shall I say the Dark?
I'm all for promoting film. I shoot film, I develop film, I wet print black and white and will RA4 again when I get running water and some better ventilation again in the darkroom.
But I don't think promoting film should be about how it looks better - it won't, ESPECIALLY for someone new to it. It should be about how film is fun, film is different, film has a different (when done casually this is quite true) look etc. not that it's objectively better.
I don't buy expired film except for an occasional emulsion that is no longer made that I can't get any other way. I shoot color on film now, both slides for projection and negatives for printing but I have them printed - again until I upgrade the darkroom. Unfortunately the only really practical way to print from the slides now is to scan and output digitally, either at home with inkjet or via Lightjet type printers from labs.
I like working with 4x5 and periodically find myself lusting after an 8x10 kit, but always hold back because I can't print it optically, except contact prints and while those can be superb I really don't want to carry a camera four times as big and accordingly heavier, spend four times as much on film etc. only to make prints no larger than 1/4 the size I can make with excellent quality from my 4x5 negatives or even medium format, so 8x10 for me would mean scanning and...I'm just not interested. I DO have a sneaking, "someday" interest in wet plate, because I think the results are beautiful and because I like all kinds of old things from the early days of any technology, and for that you can't enlarge so that will mean getting an 8x10 or whole plate or similarly larger camera.
If I get a better digital camera, which I may, it will be for two uses: 1) family snapshots where I really don't want to go into the darkroom and emerge two weeks later stinking of fixer after making a couple of hundred 5x7s to share with family *g* and 2) for very low light. In a recent PM exchange I shared this story with someone I was corresponding with, about how I had been somewhere with a film camera, the fastest film available, and just put it away because it was too dim where digital would have worked:
I remember a trip to New Orleans with my now ex wife, when I found myself hanging out with some friends and drinking absinthe in a converted warehouse occupied by a troupe of tattooed and pierced clowns and watching an adult (lots of sex related gags etc.) clown show for someone's birthday. In the words of Captain Picard, "sometimes number One, we must simply bow to the absurd." I had my Pentax LX, 50 1.7 lens and TMZ, and even at 6400 it was just too dim. I could have got some usable highlights but still with movement and difficulty focusing so I finally just thought "I need digital for this" and put the camera away and enjoyed the show. Or at least enjoyed the absinthe. TMZ and now Delta 3200 are superb-for-speed at 3200, usable but not nearly as good in my experience at 6400, and far inferior to decent digital at either speed not to mention being black and white only. I love black and white, but sometimes I also want color. (Though for some shots nothing beats the grainy mostly-highlights and empty shadows of really pushed to the max B&W too.)
Horses for courses. I wouldn't try to shoot that clown show on 4x5, though I might have shot it on 6x4.5 IF a) it had been a couple of stops brighter, and b) I got that 80/1.9 for my Mamiya I want. But it wasn't a couple of stops brighter and film shots just weren't happening.
I love film. I will use it as long as I can, and where it works. But I'm not going to refuse to use a different tool where film WON'T work, just because it isn't film. (I won't enjoy it as much though. *g*)
